Party Dress!

The bodice is good ol’ 1577 again, and the skirt is adapted from Advance 2751. The fabric is a bronzy-coppery coated poly denim, which I don’t think I would have ever picked up except that it was on super-super-sale at Fabric Outlet in the Mission last week, and because I already bought this other laminated denim I didn’t know what to do with, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and have both a wearable party dress AND a muslin. Woot!

The fabric is REALLY heavy but despite that is very easy to sew with, and although I used a press cloth I don’t think I really needed one — there was no transfer to my (hot) iron or the ironing board.

Next time I will probably make the patch pocket a bit deeper, and possibly extend it to the side seam (might have to see what that does to the zipper):

Speaking of zippers:

I just did my standard finish-the-neck with bias tape:

Here’s the sleeve binding — also, since the fabric is so heavy and plasticky, I didn’t feel the need to zig-zag the seam allowances as I usually do:

And here’s the back:

This is a pretty weird dress, even by my standards, but I kind of love it. I wore it with black tights and black ankle boots and a black cardigan, and a heavy black necklace, and was really comfortable all night, which I’m usually not in party clothes.

One of the things we were celebrating (besides having fun working together) was the launch of our new discovery reading app in the App Store … if you have an iPad running iOS 7 or later, would you consider downloading it and giving it a try? It’s free, it will help you find cool new articles about topics and concepts interesting to you (as well as articles shared by your friends on Twitter and Facebook and top news) and if you need a recommendation other than mine, Bono said it was his new favorite app. (!)

Erin – This dress is so unflattering and so not YOU! The leather sheen makes it look like a garbage bag plastic and the construction is better spent on simple calico. The pockets droop like this is a smock you put on when you get a dye job in hair salon. Frankly it’s hard to use shiny vinyl with dark mud color for any “party” dress unless the party theme is gothic rain coats. I love all your other girlie girl dresses and you are so wonderful at flowery fabric. Please stay with the feminine flowers which you do better than anyone else.

Erin, please don’t let the previous two comments discourage you from posting. I’ve had your blog bookmarked since about 2004 and love reading it, even though it’s obvious we will never see eye-to-eye on culottes. You’ve taught me so much that were you to stop blogging, I would feel as though I had lost a dear friend!

I just stumbled onto your blog…Love the style of this dress. The fabric probably wouldn’t be my choice, but for anyone under 60 looks like it would be fun. I think it’s a really cute dress and am surprised by the really negative comments.